Gage Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony (Oxford University Press, Inc., 2003)

This relatively short (181 pages, not counting the supplementary
material) book represents a massive contribution to scholarship on
barbershop singing, as is only to be expected of a professor of
Ethnomusicology and Chair of the Music Department of New York
University. Gage Averill combines musicology, history and sociology
to trace the evolution of barbershopping from the family choruses of
the mid-1830s to the many groups involved in the early recording
industry to the modern incarnation of barberhop singing in the
Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet
Singing in America (SPEBSQSA), the Sweet Adelines and Harmony, Inc.
Despite technical discourse on swipes, tags and the frequencies of
notes, Four Parts, No Waiting is very accessible, even for someone
with a limited knowledge of the science behind music.

Before reading Four Parts, No Waiting, my contact with
barbershopping was limited. Once a month, I attend a meeting next
door to the practice session of the Elm City Echoes, our local
barbershop chorus (an affiliate of Harmony, Inc.). Several of my
friends are members, and one even works for Harmony, Inc. It never
occurred to me that there was anything controversial about barbershop
singing. Certainly some people like it and some don't, as anyone
could tell from the reactions of the other people at my meeting to
our monthly concert, but that was that for controversy.

Talk about naïve! One of the central facts of barbershopping, at
least in this book, is a disagreement over whether barbershopping is
solely representative of authentic white American 19th-century folk
music, or whether it owes style, repertoire, etc., to
African-American close-harmony. This point is important enough that
it apparently formed part of the SPEBSQSA's mythos, to the extent
that Blacks were excluded from membership in that organization until
relatively recently (1963), and that Harmony, Inc., was formed in
1959 by chapters of the Sweet Adelines who broke away over the issue
of being allowed to accept Black members. (Hopeful note: the quartet
featured on the SPEBSQSA homepage has a Black member.)

Naïve to the end, I don't see why the colour of the singer should be
of any moment at all, but it obviously was to the barbershopping
world, at least in the past. Pity.

At any rate, Four Parts, No Waiting studies this and other aspects
of barbershop singing fairly dispassionately. Averill has obviously
done a lot of research, including interviewing barbershoppers and
attending SPEBSQSA conventions, as witness the extensive endnotes to
each chapter. The glossary, bibliography and index are useful and
seem fairly complete. At least, I was able to find what I wanted to,
though of course someone else may not be as lucky.

The companion CD includes twenty-two cuts chosen not for their quality (some
are from very old recordings and the sound quality is horrible) but
to illustrate points in the book. The notes on each selection are
quite clear, referring back to the appropriate pages in the text and,
in several cases, even giving the time reference for examples of
particular techniques.

Four Parts, No Waiting also includes a number of black and white
illustrations, ranging from Norman Rockwell paintings to pictures
from SPEBSQSA conventions, and examples of music.

All in all, this intriguing but occasionally technical work should
appeal to, and broaden the horizons of, those interested in American
folk music.

Gage Averill has a Web presence as well. NYU maintains two pages on him here and here. The latter one even has pictures of him. You can find detailed information on one of his other books, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti, here.